Big Cities on the Rise

America's big cities are growing, according to new figures out today from the U.S. Census Bureau. These latest estimates show significant population increases in the largest cities in the U.S. between April 2010 and July 2011. Overall, U.S. cities saw a growth rate of 1 percent during that time. Large cities – the 285 U.S. cities with populations over 100,000 – saw a slightly faster growth rate of 1.3 percent as a group.

Large cities didn't grow across the board, but some showed particularly significant growth rates during this period. Fifteen cities with populations over 100,000 saw their populations grow by at least 3 percent over that time.

New Orleans leads the pack with a rate of 4.9 percent, seeing its population increase by 16,911 to a total of 360,740. More than half of the cities on this list are in Texas, which, as we've reported previously has seen huge increases in new housing construction relative to the rest of the country. Regionally, the South and the West led most of this growth. Large cities in the South saw an average growth rate of 1.8 percent, and those in the West grew at an average rate of 1.4 percent.

Of the roughly 715 cities with populations above 50,000, 24 cities saw their populations increase by more than 10,000 people.

But not every city was a winner. Eight cities saw their numbers drop by more than 1,000. The loss leader, not surprisingly, is Detroit, which saw a drop of 7,192. Bad, but not as bad as the nearly 24,000 people the city lost on average each year between 2000 and 2010.